THEATER

THEATER; Spotlight on Harburg's Lyrics

By ALVIN KLEIN

Published: July 10, 1994

It cannot be said that E. Y. Harburg was out of touch with his inner child.

Once I built a tower

Now it's done

Brother can you spare a dime?

Or that he forgot how his parents "never had one moment's rest from worrying about money for the next day."

Wanna cry, wanna croon

Wanna laugh like a loon

It's that old devil moon

In your eyes.

But was he ever a fool for love.

AT the Phoenix Theater Company, Harburg's amazingly diverse lyrics rage and glisten. "Over the Rainbow," in its world premiere, could give way to a new genre, the lyricfest. Although the composers of the nearly 50 songs herein are no slouches -- Harold Arlen, Sammy Fain, Burton Lane -- the show is essentially an appreciation of Harburg's lyrics. Because there is no more edifying or celebratory piece of musical theater around at the moment, see the show and talk about its conceptual and other problems later.

"I grew up when America had a dream and its people a hope," Edgar Yipsel Harburg -- they called him Yip -- said when he inaugurated the lyrics and lyricists series at Manhattan's 92d Street Y in 1970. That evening, Harburg, who was 67 at the time, described himself as a "rhymed chronicler of the world," which prompted the critic John Lahr to write of that program: "No lyricist of the theater's older generation has been more inventive with the rhymed word or more deeply involved with the destiny of the nation."

Now what writer of popular entertainment would want to carry the weight of such cause consciousness and social significance? But Harburg wrote with finesse and levity. He once delivered an address in defense of dignity. He also made up all the lyrics for the musical, "The Wizard of Oz."

Thus, "Bloomer Girl (1944) was a hit musical about rights of women and blacks, not a tract. And Harburg's response to blacklisting by Hollywood was a return to Broadway where he wrote, "Finian's Rainbow" (1947), a satire about capitalism and the exploitation of labor in which a racist Southern Senator turns black. It was also a pot-of-gold musical that fixed Glocca Morra in an immortal theatrical fairyland.

So it should come as no surprise that Harburg's breakthrough song was the defining Depression plaint, "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime," which he pointed out was more a commentary on a country that lets a proud working man down than "a maudlin lyric of a guy begging."

In the Phoenix show, Nick Cavarra, who invests the song with a ringing fulfillment of the lyricist's specifications, is called Al. "They called me Al" is how the lyric goes. But who knows why the four other singers are designated as characters -- Jenny, Johnny, Sarah and Julie -- when there is no discernible or necessary story line.

Whimsical points of view by Harburg from "At This Point in Rhyme" and "Rhymes for the Irreverent," two of Harburg's verse volumes, wend through the show. While there is a semblance of a thematic design here -- overlapping love songs, money songs, moon songs, April songs -- it is too schematic and trivial to support such classy material.

One is left with isolated pleasures. "It's Only a Paper Moon" ("But it wouldn't be make-believe if you believed in me," the concluding lines, summed up Harburg's credo. "Lydia, the Tattooed Lady," which was written for Groucho Marx. Felicitous rhymes (annuities/incongruities). More felicitous lines: "When I can't fondle the hand that I'm fond of, I fondle the hand at hand."

And standout interpretations: Catherine Russell's swell show tune, "Here's to Your Illusion," from the short-lived "Flahooley" (1951), which Harburg revised for a summer production by the Scarsdale Music Theater in 1979. A wistful charming "If I Only Had a Brain/Heart," sung in dreamy juxtaposition by Betsy Joslyn and John Dossett. "When the Idle Poor Become the Idle Rich," smashingly sung by the whole cast right onto its hymnlike conclusion. Ms. Russell's and Sherry Boone's stirring duet, "Where Has the Rainbow Gone?"

For all their youthful ebullience, youthful ebullience is the last thing needed for the rueful "Last Night When We Were Young" with its lyric, "ages ago last night." No one on the stage in Purchase qualifies to sing that one.

And one can lament the absence of "Evelina" ("What's the use of smellin' watermelon/Clinging to the other fellow's vine?") and "The Eagle and Me," a freedom anthem -- both from "Bloomer Girl" -- and the whole of "Look to the Rainbow," when just the verse is included here.

Until a more cohesive homage to Harburg happens, it would be truly ungallant to pass this one by. Through next Sunday at the Performing Arts Center, Purchase College. Box office: 251-7020.